No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Don't tear down this wall!

There is a Big Lie which is increasingly gaining ground in the US. The extreme religious right saturates the media 24-7 with this lie, and the media cravenly regurgitates this lies and marginalizes anyone who tries to point out that it is in fact a lie: that the US was founded as an explicitly Christian nation, by devout Christians who were escaping a secular and intolerant Europe so that they could have freedom to worship the Christian god.

A good example of the triumphalist majoritarianism of the "Christian nation" myth-peddlers can be found here. See also this story of a Texas state senator who became enraged when a non-Christian prayer was offered on the senate floor. (But it's encouraging to note that at least some high-school kids see through the lie.)

It's true that many of the original American colonies were hotbeds of religious intolerance and church-state entanglement, founded by zealots who fled Europe not so much to escape religious persecution as to impose their own variety. Some colonies had an established church, and you had to pay taxes to support this church whether you were a member or not. Some colonies banned activities that were considered sinful by the established church but not necessarily by others. In Puritan Massachusetts for example, for many years it was illegal to celebrate Christmas. There really was a war on Christmas back then!

But the founders of the US had a very different idea on the proper relationship between church and state. They were all too familiar with the history of long, bloody religious wars in Europe, and the constant petty squabbling between different denominations in America, which they feared could escalate into open violence.

And so the Founding Fathers stated very clearly in the Constitution that there should be no established religion and no abridgement of religious freedom. In many of the new states, the majority church opposed the first amendment while minority religious groups supported it, fearing that without it, they would be swallowed up by larger churches. One such group was the Danbury Baptists, who sought reassurances from Thomas Jefferson that the Constitution would protect their rights. Jefferson wrote back a famous letter in which he coined the phrase "Wall of separation between church and state." It's a powerful visual metaphor which makes plain how church and state were to relate to each other; each minding its own business and staying out of the other's territory. Good walls make good neighbors!

In recent years, some Christian dominionists such as George Bush Junior associate David Barton have been peddling a bogus version of this letter which has Jefferson calling for a "one-way wall" which allows the church to control the state but not vice versa. Others have claimed that the letter is irrelevant because the words "church-state separation" do not appear in the Constitution. But the Supreme Court ruled as long ago as 1878 (in Reynolds v. United States) that Jefferson's words were the words of a framer of the Constitution explaining its intent, and as such should be given the same weight as if they did in fact appear in the Constitution. And it's clear from Jefferson's other writings, and those of other founding fathers, that they would have been horrified by the idea of an officially Christian United States. (While you're here, take my quiz: match the church-state separation quote with the founding father.)

The very first international treaty signed by the United States was the Treaty of Tripoli, which stated plainly: "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." This treaty was passed unanimously by the Senate, and there's no record of any debate or controversy about this unequivocal statement.

In the 1940's, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote: "If there is a fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox politics, nationalism, religion, or any other matters, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

So we see that there is a consistent pattern from the founding of the Republic down to the present day. The United States is NOT a Christian nation. It is not founded on any religion or sect, nor should it give any religion or sect special privileges. It takes no position on which religion, if any, is the "true" one.

Some religionists are sensible enough to realize that this state of affairs actually benefits religion. Christianity flourishes in the US, with over 3,000 different sects of that religion alone, but without the religious violence and infighting that marks so many other parts of the world. As Barry Goldwater noted, this notable success was achieved only by maintaining the separation of church and state.

The wall of church-state separation protects everyone, whether Christian, minority religion, or no religion. That's why I say: Don't tear down this wall!